Word of the Day
JOMO
noun
Slang.
a feeling of contentment with one’s own pursuits and activities, without worrying over the possibility of missing out on what others may be doing.
More about JOMO
JOMO, the acronym for “the joy of missing out,” and its opposite, FOMO “the fear of missing out,” both entered English around the same time, in the early years of the 21st century.
how is JOMO used?
Don’t think of JOMO as a detox, but more like an integral part to a healthy, well-balanced nutrition plan for your brain.
JOMO allows us to live life in the slow lane, to appreciate human connections, to be intentional with our time, to practice saying “no” ….
mother wit
noun
natural or practical intelligence, wit, or sense.
More about mother wit
Mother knows best, as they say. In mother wit, the word mother means “innate, inborn.” Wit comes from a very widespread Proto-Indo-European root weid-, woid-, wid– “to see, know.” This root appears in Latin vidēre “to see,” Sanskrit veda “knowledge,” Greek ideîn (and dialect wideîn) “to know” (literally “to have seen”), Slavic (Czech) vědět “to know” and vidět “to see.” From wid– Germanic (Old English) has the verb witan “to know.” In Old English the first and third person singular form was wāt “I know; he/she/it knows,” which survives today as the obsolete word wot (“God wot”). Mother wit entered English in the 15th century.
how is mother wit used?
… not one of the rest of us had the guts, the gumption, or the mother wit to recognize where all four of us were headed and drag the fool to a stop.
One’s mother wit was a precious sort of necromancy, which could pierce every mystery at first sight ….
motte
noun
Chiefly Southwestern U.S.
a grove or clump of trees in prairie land or open country.
More about motte
Motte is a word that may cause food fights in reference libraries among etymologists. Motte, “a grove or stand of trees in prairie land or open country,” is a regionalism in the American Southwest, especially in Texas. The origin of motte may be from Mexican Spanish mata, from European Spanish mata “grove, plantation,” and perhaps from Late Latin matta, source of English mat. Other authorities say that motte is not a borrowing from Spanish but from French motte “hillock, mound” (English moat), related to Medieval Latin mota “hill, mound, fortified height” (further etymology is speculative). Motte entered English in the 19th century.
how is motte used?
We came up finally to a place where the road made a bend around a motte of trees, and I thought I ought to be able to find it again.
They’d camped at the edge of a motte, a thick grove of oak trees, not too far from the Arroyo Colorado …